Friday, August 14, 2015

Fox Mulder, Bible Scholar

Fox Mulder demonstrates his knowledge of Scripture by quoting the verse in full. "He who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood shall have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day." He then makes a crack about "big-haired preachers" and their feeble literal grasp of the Bible.One problem. The verse doesn't exist. What he quotes is in fact John 6:54, although the wording did not precisely match any popular English translation that I could find.

I'm not going to hypothesize on why the episode's writers decided to make up a Bible reference instead of using an actual one. But whatever the reason for referring to the words of John 6:54 as John 52:54, it stands out as a choice that is ... just weird. Yes, this was in the long ago days before Google and Bible Gateway made looking up verses really easy. But still ... aren't there fact-checkers in the organization somewhere? And the cynic of course wonders why nobody in the ENTIRE production crew noticed the mistake.

Again, they get Jesus' words correct, which I appreciate. They didn't make up words and put them in the Bible. But they made up the place in the Bible where those words are found.